Lieber/Stoller alternative to evolution

There are flying ants which lost their wings due to their arriving and settling near an alive volcano.

According to Lieber/Stoller, these ants became so "intelligent" that with their gained experience and knowledge, this information in their minds caused them to lose their wings.

But, I have a much better theory.

My theory is that the volcano saw the flying ants migrating and living on its surface. As the volcano has been living alone for so many centuries, this volcano decided to continually release harmful fumes in that way, that after a few generations the mutations caused the ants to lose their wings.

Since then, the volcano is happy because it has company for many other generations until its fumes guide the ants to extermination.

Yup. the theory of the intelligence of the volcano sounds more plausible.

The ostrich lost his wings too, for all practical purposes. Losing **** is easy, it's GAINING new **** which is hard.

Same as cutting hair, very easy to cut it off, much harder to put it back if you screw up.....

No fair bringing facts into the discussion!

About 20 years ago I had a field methods geology course for grad tudents that I was team teaching. We ran into a bunch of these "Roswell Creationists" who were involved in collecting some fossil reptiles (NOT able to recall the ages, but they were NOT dinosaurs, so maybe they were Miocene). So, if they wanted to even consdier C14 in the future, the samples were invalid because they were already converted to a silica rock and were NOT a bone .
I don't know whether they found any "Soft tissue " but I doubt it because the method of extracting oft tissues involeves chemically eroding the surrounding rock that contains it.

They were cleaning their samples within a large bucket with lots of detergents and water. One of my students asked them if they were going to do any contextual stratigraphy or dating. She got a really
puzzled look at the word "Contextual". Also, we had a great teaching moment because we had the students go over the field methods used by the other batch (they might have been from any number of the Creationist museums that are around the US).
The first thing all the students picked up on was the possible "contamination" of the samples by the detergent itself. We didn't think they were going to do any C14 then but lots of the C14 samples that are being done NOWADAYS, are from old samples in collections.

My one partner (who IS a paleontologist) had noted that several of the samples that were recently sent to the tree ring lab at U of Arizona, were reported as "Shellacked' and he wondered whether any of them were washed "clean" using non-Di water and detergents or soaps.

When **** is that old, it only takes the presence of a very few atoms of C14 to actually give a bogus date. There SHOULD BE , no C14 there at all, and the fact that someone finds it should NOT be ascribed to an IN SITU condition of the sample itself.

shellacs all have very recent C14 burdens> The stuff is made from crushed inects that exude a kind of shimmery "poop" that dissolves in alcohol. LAb ALcohols are mostly recent C14 also because they are grain distilled .

Ugg. Samples collected by poorly informed students or volunteers should be labelled as such and treated as suspect for any future analyses.

I have my own embarrassing anecdote with regards to that. As an undergrad, I volunteered to help with a non-intrusive survey of a site. At one point, I discovered what later turned out to be the distal end of a deer femur, with signs of having been cooked. Instead of alerting the others, I impulsively picked it up and took it to the grad student leading the survey. He was less than pleased, even after I led him back to where I found it an replaced it very precisely as I'd found it.

In my defense, I had been given zero instruction as to protocol. Anyway, had radiocarbon dating been done on that sample, I would have contaminated it. Of course, since it was a surface find, it wouldn't have been a candidate for C14 dating, anyway. But the principle holds: Don't trust anything collected by amateurs.

You didn't DO anything to the sample besides mess up context. If C14 was really needed they would have done an acid etch of a cut section into the bone .
The Creationists that gunga mentions, are apparently only sampling the "Soft tissues" that have recently been found in the bone distals. BUT even there, the "Soft tissues" are encased in a matrix of hard rock that hs to be acid etched , then with all the hub bub, Id bet that theres nothing submittable without a detailed report of oopses and QA statements nd dupes..
The point is that NOBODY IN THEIR RIGHT MIND would consider even doing C14 just because the handling and etching nd washing nd ither stuff would really add potential contamination.
THE actual bones (Im sure, having seen a lot of HELL CREEK STUFF) have no organics in them (or recent CaCO3).

The yve done nothing xcept show that contamination to a competent lab is slightly higher than the BACKGROUND N14/C14 atmospherics

Welcome to physical reality.

Species do not gain characteristics alone, species lose and gain characteristics throughout generations.

By fact, losing is greater than gaining, and after generations pass by, the descendants are always closer to extinction in a greater rate.

The crude reality is that there is no any evolution, but a simple and inevitable decay. The elements of the entire universe are in a continued decay, and by consequence, species (which are formed by elements) will follow the same trend.

The "theory is evolution" but "the fact is decay".

And in science, facts rule over theories.

actually theories are composed of facts, and the theory helps explain what all the facts mean.

In his book ' The greatest Show on Earth' Mr Dawkins points out the different meanings of the word 'theory'.
Evolutionists mean a hypothesis that has been confirmed by observation or experiment and is accepted as accounting for the known facts.
Critics mean a hypothesis proposed as an explanation a speculation or conjecture.
Both of these are taken from the Oxford Dictionary.

Thwory--the meaning in the sciences IS quite clear and is generally understood. There is no controversy except in the minds of the Creationists. Carry on, Ill keep using the definition that used in science.
By the way , that portion that you quote from DAwkinsTHE GREATEST SHOW on EARTH is quite incomplete isn't it? On pages 9 and 10 of the chapter entitled "Only a Theory" goes quite deeply into what's on the Creationist mind and the mind of a scientist.

Yes I shortened it to make a point. How about this for exciting writing is mind boggling.
' energy from the sun powers life, to coax and strech the laws of physics and chemistry to evolve prodigious feats of complexity, diversity, beauty and uncanny illusion of statistical improbability and deliberate design.'
I will make mine longer when I can write like that. By the way thanks for drawing my attention to this book.

If you're speaking in a scientific context, it's a good idea to use the scientific definition to avoid miscommunication.

A neat explanatory diagram. I'm sure most people do not use the scientific meaning in general conversation. I often hear the phrase oh its only a theory, or have you heard the latest theory. The popular press also use the general meaning since it often does not suit them to put their heads into a noose, although they prepare nooses for there victims.

I've even heard scientists use it in the vernacular during a discussion about science, so it's hard to be too demanding about it, really. In the written form, though, it's easier to be careful. And especially when the discussion tends toward "it's just a theory" kind of statements, then the definitions become more crucial.